About Koley Jessen
Koley Jessen is known for its work in the middle market, helping clients build momentum and achieve results. Transactional work is one of the primary areas of service for the firm, which brings together transactional attorneys with specialty attorneys in the employment, litigation, corporate and tax departments to provide customized legal solutions.
Background and Approach
Until the spring of 2019, Koley Jessen primarily used Adobe software to handle the administrative aspects of a closing—from creating signature packets to building closing books. The firm had recently worked to improve its closing book process, but it remained both tedious and time-consuming.
Koley Jessen was introduced to the idea of automating its approach to closings at a time when the firm had a groundswell in M&A work. After a firm shareholder saw a demonstration of SimplyAgree, the platform was shared with a pilot group of paralegals and legal administrative assistants who quickly agreed it would improve the firm’s closing processes. It was decided to move forward with implementation.
The Results
Increased efficiency
SimplyAgree has both streamlined and brought consistency to the firm’s closing book process, saving countless hours of valuable time. Even when changes need to be made to a closing book at any stage, they are easily implemented without having to start from scratch.
Employee empowerment
Importantly, the platform’s user-friendly approach has empowered firm employees in significant ways. Even those often apprehensive about new technology learned SimplyAgree quickly and are among its most active users within the firm. As a result, they have a new sense of confidence with creating closing books, which was previously a frustrating and daunting experience, and this is leading to new skill sets and professional growth among employees.
Quality improvement
Because employees spend less time working on the formatting and technical aspects of creating closing books, they are now afforded more time to focus on the quality of their work product and, ultimately, the quality of the deliverable closing book sent to the client.
In addition to the closing book process, SimplyAgree streamlines and increases confidence in signature packet creation by adding “tags” for individual signers on each signature page, ensuring no signature pages or signatories are missed when packets are generated. These packets can easily and confidently be sent both traditionally and electronically for execution, and upon signing, be automatically applied to the documents within SimplyAgree for a more streamlined process of finalizing transaction documents. Attorneys and staff at Koley Jessen have come to rely on this process in order to effectively and efficiently run the Firm’s transactions.
Delivering over-the-top service and results is a hallmark of Koley Jessen’s brand, and SimplyAgree further facilitates that goal by enhancing the deliverables to the client.
